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Author: Tom Devlin

Time Flies!
WOW, it’s already been a year since I started the and completed IBM training on BluePrism® Robotic Process Automation software as a special project for an account. Later this month, I will be working with Python and Raspberry-pi for completely different robotic and IOT concepts at Palm Beach State College.

Unlike in “The Terminator”, RPA Robots will never become “Self Aware”!!, WHY? Because they are simply intended to do as the name states in reverse. Automate, Business Processes via Software Robots.

Refined once more, an RPA robot simply executes the repetitive keystrokes, Mouse movements and clicks with logic that executes business a “well defined business process.

Many enterprises have employees executing business processes at a keyboard, opening an application or spreadsheet, evaluating that data and moving it to another application or pressing an approval button. Spending 2, 4 or 8 hours a day using Copy/Paste, entering a few keystrokes and moving and clicking a mouse.

In the scenario above, the best case is 2 hours of a resource is being diverted to a lower productivity task and worst case is a full time employee is required. Opportunity exists for potentially high and quick ROI. What if, a software tool (Robot) could do the same thing ? One time cost to write the robot (let’s pretend it doesn’t require update and maintenance). It frees up an entire resource for other duties or frees up 2-4 hrs of an employee to do higher level more productive tasks. Robots can be run at night, weekends several times a day, more quickly, with less human error and reduces costs of mistakes.

One just needs to do the math, what is the current labor cost of the resource-cost of developing and licensing the robot. So that’s the Idea in a nutshell. I suggest reviewing the Everest Research Group RPA report or the Gartner report as a ready reference for more detailed information about RPA and Vendors.

My teams focus was Enterprise Mobility Services. So, how I did I get involved with RPA? A multi-disciplined account team was proactively engaged with a client to address ongoing requirements. The account was looking more for early identification of issues and proactive action as opposed to saving labor. the client had seen some presentations and the question came up, could several their few to several hour time consuming tasks be automated? I was the only one on the greater immediate team with a Software Engineering background to provide assistance.

Working with a few RPA tools was fun. It took me back to my programming roots. I had to quickly learn a few RPA tool’s develop, assess scenarios, create a few prototypes and make recommendations. It came down to a comparison between WinAutomation® and BluePrism to recommend appropriate solution for the accounts projects. Actually a few of the tasks while easily done in RPA were quite simple and Windows OS related that they were done in Shell Script and the more complex tasks left for WinAutomation or BluePrisim.

The example above demonstrated that the appropriate choice can be radically different based on what the robot is expected to accomplish, the repetitive action applications they solve, infrastructure, the complexity, skill required and cost. The cases where scripting were used are examples.

BluePrism provided a greater set of capabilities with deeper integration with applications and processes that benefit from optimization. However, it required more effort, greater skill set and a greater cost per instance of a Robot.

WinAutomation was easier to work with, required less skill to develop but had limitations in standard capabilities and not as rich integration with applications and processes that benefit from optimization. However, much less expensive.

With either provider a robot was a robot, large/complex =$X; Small/Simple same $X. BluePrism robot cost was more expensive. Additionally, unless changed, in the BluePrism cost model, a Robot deployed to 10 locations = 10 robots and cost 10*$X. With WinAutomation Develop once, Deploy many and pay for a single Robot. For a more detailed look at the RPA landscape I suggest looking at the Everest Research Group RPA report or the Gartner report from a sponsoring vendor

My experience and the Video
While creating ‘Robots’ using Robotic Process Automation tools is not typical software programming (my 1st love), it does use many commonly used algorithms, constructs and logic typical of traditional programming. This can be seen in the 2nd part of the 3.5 minute video where robot is repeated in single step mode where the code in the tool takes the form of a flow chart including moving to a new chart, calling a subroutine……..

Depending on the skill of the learner, RPA’s “can” be learned very quickly. I believe at one time BluePrism made the claim you don’t need trained programmers to implement robots. However, unless you purchase development services, you do need BluePrism accredited developer which assumes 3 months training and 6 months to become a professional. I would say a good programmer or process engineer would make an Excellent ‘Robot’ Designer.

With RPA you can do amazing things and free up expensive resources doing, needed, labor intensive, brute force tasks to do other things.

Both of the RPA products BluePrism and WinAutomation are good and it was a fun challenge to create a few robots. The brief 3.5 minute video below is a screen recording of a sample training scenario where a BluePrism Robot automates the tasks of a worker opening a daily spreadsheet of orders and enters them into an order processing system, even calling out errors.

Yes, Bagels are Brain food and bring enlightenment!
You won’t find this in any of the SDLC documentation.

If your the smartest guy on the floor, this may not help. But , if your an intelligent person on a team surrounded by the brain trust of your organization or you know there are others near by that can help this may work for you.

Buy Bagels and cream cheese and some of your toughest problems will be solved. Good Donuts can work too.

When I was a less senior software engineer. I was given many new development projects (device drivers, diagnostics) that were new to me but old news to the geniuses around me. Some of them were inventors of the laptop or desktop architectures you use today.

Every once in a while I would get stuck. I didn’t know how to program around something, get something to work or I thought the code was there but it just wasn’t doing what I expected. I knew I was close, the answer was staring me in the face, or It wouldn’t work that way and needed a new approach.

I knew the resident geniuses knew the key to unlocking the door to my issue answer and could save me days but given their projects, schedules and demands. So, what was the best approach to get help.

Now, I’m not shy and If I know the right person am very much in favor of knock on door and ask for a few minutes. But if you know someone does but not exactly who and or it might be hard to find some of their time, let them find you!

How? Brain Food, Bagels. When your stuck, have a bit work obvious at your desk. Bring “good” bagels early, set them where anyone can see, make it obvious they were free for the taking and wait. Slowly but surely word will spread and Brains will arrive. The will asking, whats the occasion, work anniversary? Promotion? …. to which you reply, It’s Tuesday, or whatever the day of the week it is. Tell them feel free to take one. Now ever good sport helping themselves to a freebie will be polite and offer chit-chat. How is your morning? what are you working on….etc…

Simply tell the truth. going OK, working on such and such and trying to figure out a problem. or your stuck on a piece of code.. DON’T ask for help! let it come to you. be fairly specific in the description. By the time the brain has finished fixing his bagel, the brain will say, Let me have a look. Usually before long the issue was solved and I was back on my way developing or testing the next unit of the program.

Clearly you have to pick your battles and need to do this sparingly. If your office or cube looks more like a bagel shop than a work place your in trouble.
and If your truly new, people will understand. Find a mentor or someone senior and schedule regular session to go over how your doing and where your need help. Your learning, its expected and will be respected.

And If you come across someone with Bagels, feel free to take one, Ask what they are working on, offer some assistance and maybe take them under your wing, be a mentor, check in and see how they are doing!

I used bagels and donuts. In your office it might be a healthy choice…
Please leave comments below or contact me on LinkedIn.

This is the final installment in my four-part series discussing four zones of Mobile Success. The first post discussed the enterprise zone: the enterprise back end, including mail servers, messaging solution and directory services. The second zone is the enterprisesecurity zoneconsisting of firewalls, VPN’s and reverse proxy. The third zone I covered was the Internet. All of these function as points of success or failure in mobility.

The final zone is the device user zone, which is probably the zone most prone to failures. The zone consists of the user, device, applications and the local wireless carrier. For many reasons, new devices, replacement devices, provisioning, re-provisioning with the carrier messaging system and enterprise often result in a issue and call to the help-desk. The vast majority of interactions occur in this zone, and the more interactions there are, the more opportunity for errors.

From part three of the series, the Internet Zone; data travels the course of the wireless carrier’s wire, fiber, switches and routers until it reaches a wireless tower associated with a device. Then the tower transmits the data to the device. Because a mobile device is an “always on” device, the associated tower can change and must be maintained throughout the day as you travel to different locations.

In short, the meeting notice I mentioned in part 3 leaves the enterprise and finds the first wired network on-ramp to a devices carrier, traverses their network to the tower near the device and then wirelessly sends the meeting notice to the device.

How does all this magic happen? When the phone or tablet is turned on, it looks for a tower to associate with. Once that happens the carrier notes that user Juanita Doe’s device can communicate through tower XYZ, regardless of where a message traffic originates.

As for points of failure, any of the following could apply at the device level:

Failing device hardware

Battery that’s low or spent

Device out of coverage, weak or no signal

First time use or replacement, not provisioned or properly provisioned with the carrier

First time use or replacement, not provisioned or properly provisioned with the enterprise

Encryption or decryption failures, expired keys

Incorrect password

Corrupt application service books, policies or certificates on the device

Incompatible OS level

Below we have the complete picture of the basic mobile enterprise network again. As demonstrated by the discussion in this series, so much technology has to go right for the basics of wireless and mobile applications to work. It takes even more for an enterprise wireless strategy to be effective and successful. For a strategy to be effective it must include mobile management processes, such as procedures and tools including predictive analytics to detect problems, alert the enterprise administrators and help isolate any issues or failures in the enterprise mobile ecosystem.

As mentioned in Part 1 of the series, As an Architect in Mobility for over 17 years now, I have found this diagram and discussion to be extremely valuable tools.

I believe the 1st incarnation of this was in 2003 when an IBM colleague (Scott Symes) and I had the blackeye’s as we experienced the effects of issues in different zones. It was BlackBerry at the time, hence we gave it the nickname of “BlackBerry Blackeye” chart. But, as other technologies have come to market, the essentials are still true today regardless of device manufacturer, operating system or application. The diagram has been updated and expanded reflect some of these changes as Android, IOS Devices, Messaging, Monitoring and MDM/EMM (Airwatch, IBM/Fiberlink, BlackBerry/Good, MobileIron, Tangoe, Zenprise, etc.) have come along. Others have disappeared or been consolidated. However, the fundamental issues and the concepts remain constant. There are many points of success and failure in a Mobile enterprise infrastructure.

A well designed, planned and implemented strategies, infrastructures and applications will prevent lost sales due to abandoned carts, increase customer loyalty and repeat use. Will increase employee productivity and prevent lost investment in the failure of application adoption

In the simplest of terms, success equals good high quality uninterrupted service. Applications that consider the diverse screen real estate and user interaction. Unresponsiveness due to back-end servers, load balancing or firewall issues, internet network congestion will be seen as the fault of and blamed on the application.

Mobile success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder or in this case the user. Therefore, the success of a mobile enterprise infrastructure and whether or not you get a “black-eye” depends on how well these points of failure are understood and managed.

It’s my hope this series, revised from original publication at IBM Mobile Insights, has been and will be helpful to you. Please leave comments below or contact me on LinkedIn.

Internet

This series of articles describe the four zones of success or failure (points of failure) in an end-to-end mobile enterprise infrastructure. In the first part I discussed the enterprise zone—the enterprise back-end, including mail servers, messaging solution and directory services. In the second part I covered the enterprise security zone, consisting of firewalls, virtual private networks (VPNs) and reverse proxy.

The third zone in the journey is the zone where the enterprise has absolutely no control, the Internet zone! The Internet zone stretches out, encircling the globe, a mysterious cloud with an army of routers, switches, wires, fiber and wireless carriers that provide the infrastructure and plumbing to carry your data packets from end to end. It’s the big hop between your enterprise and devices.

Within the Internet zone are two key add-ons: push notification services and network operations centers.

Network operations center (NOC): Some of the mobile enterprise solutions make use of an NOC concept. The two most notable are BlackBerry and Good Technology. In these solutions all traffic related to their solution passes through the NOC. This has the advantage that the enterprise’s security zone only needs firewall rules to the trusted NOC. The NOC integrates all communications from devices on the various carrier networks.

Like any other link, a broken link affects the chain. However, the NOCs are highly redundant, fault-tolerant configurations that are rarely down. They are so reliable that when an incident occurs the disruption often makes the evening news. As far as point of failure, it is far more likely that your local network connection to the NOC will fail rather than the NOC itself.

The second to last leg of the Internet zone is the wireless carriers (that is if the device is not WiFi connected). Interestingly enough 99 percent of the path of a meeting notice going from server to wireless device is not over wireless. The notice will follow the wired or fiber connections of the Internet and wireless carrier until the meeting notice hits the cell tower nearest the intended device. Wireless carriers have a vast array of switches, routers and wired or fiber networks before anything goes wireless.

Once again, any of these elements can create a point of failure in the communication path. The user perception will be that the mobile device or application is at fault and failing again. As in the first two zones, some monitoring and mobile device management (MDM) or Enterprise Mobility solutions provide tools to help determine these issues.

2017 Update: Today various Mobile analytics tools are available to assist in the identification of a failing node in the network, point of failure. Don’t let the term analytics put you off. Often significant data and analysis can be done with just a few lines of code and the tool will do the heavy lifting. Please refer to my article Demystifying Analytics and a short video example

The next and final zone in the series will be the user zone.

I hope this was helpful, Please leave comments below or contact me on Linkedinand stay tuned to finish out the series republication.

To be current, MDM’s, Mobile Device Management systems have evolved beyond Mail, Calendar and Contacts into Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) Suites by including Content, Access and Application Management with Device Management at the cornerstone.

However, one simple fact remains, it has never been about the device. It has always been about the data. What data can be accessed? by whom? How can it be done to ensure integrity and security.

This becomes absolutely obvious in events that occur every day: a device is accidentally dropped in the dishwater, is fumbles out of your fingers and breaks on the concrete, or is run over by a car. At that point, do we really care about managing the “device”? No, from an individual perspective we really only care about the inconvenience but mostly that we may have lost contacts, pictures and other data that can’t be restored to a replacement device.

The Enterprise concern about a “broken” device is replacement and lost productivity. A security issue does not exist. An enterprises main concern is about the device that’s lost, stolen or compromised so thingslike this can’t happen.

We all have moments where we temporarily misplace a device or it falls between the bed and night stand. That’s why there are apps to to have the device ring out, come find me. But, at the point that we frantically discover our device is truly missing, lost or stolen the action we take is is to immediately request that the device be remotely disabled, data wiped and service canceled. The answer proves once again that it’s not the the device itself that’s important but the data it contains and can access.

From an MDM/EMM perspective, for all intents and purposes the device you carry is simply a black box. An MDM/EMM is really a means to protect data or securely rendering content on the device by manipulating device features through security policies that control access to the data, should the device get into the wrong hands. Now that was a long sentence, with a lot of meaning, so let me break it down:

We’ve already established that what’s on the device that can’t be restored is more important than the physical device itself.

What is of real concern is what data can be accessed or transferred by the device, in the right or wrong hands.

Whats needed is :

An understanding of how to manage, secure and protect a device and it’s data.

To understand the business, it’s data, concepts and assets that need protection.

To adopt a business strategy determine the processes and data to extend to mobile employees.

A mobile strategy to utilize the most appropriate software, tools, methods and devices to securely implement the business strategy.

Understand the various employee roles and associated access needs to business processes, applications, data, and the protection needs for corporate and employee owned devices.

Discussing MDM is not really much different than when friends and family who know I work at IBM ask me, “What computer should I buy?” or “What’s the best smartphone to get?” My first question to them is, “What to you want to do with it?” For my wife and a couple of cousins, a mobile device is only used to make phone calls. No texting, no apps, nothing. For them, why get a smartphone and data plan? Another cousin wants a device to support her medical research. In that case, how about a reasonably powerful laptop with sufficient storage?

Again, It’s not about the device—the phone, smartphone, tablet or 2 in 1 computer. It’s about you—what you need to do as an individual or business, what data and applications you will be working with, what and how much needs to be protected, who needs access, where and when. These things will be the foundation of a strategy, which will determine the applications and supporting software infrastructure needed, which will determine which devices best render that data to your employees and customers, which will lead you to the MDM solution that allows you to seamlessly provide protected data to those who need it, where they need it, when they need it.

The bottom line with MDM: it’s never been about the device. Just as Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) told Marty (Robert Redford) in the 1992 movie “Sneakers” , “It’s not about who’s got the most bullets [the tools]. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think … it’s all about the information!”

Its the same with MDM, the enterprise needs to control or manage “the information”, the data, it’s content and access. I helped establish these services while at IBM using IBM and Vendor MDM/EMM tools.

It was “Cosmo’s” dream come true, “It’s about who controls the information”, and with MDM/EMM’s, YOU manage, protect and control the enterprises information.

To learn more, ‘Gartner’ typically a publishes an MDM (now EMM) report annually called the “Magic Quadrant” containing details about product and service providers. A free copy of the current (2016 )report can be viewed at this link or from EMM Vendor websites.

I hope this was helpful, Please leave comments below or contact me on Linkedinor any means appropriate for you.

When it’s MDM or EMM.

Several mobile device management (MDM/EMM) products have a feature that is suggestive of Telecom Expense Management (TEM) but is still far from being a significant or complete telecom expense saving solution. MDM/EMM product features offer an limited opportunity to reduce a few specific types of mobile expenses such as “roaming” charges and unused/under used devices While these features focus on a subset of devices they do have value. However, these features should not be confused with a true telecom expense management system that offers a broad range of significant saving opportunities across all devices.

I don’t intend to detract the value of the isolated and limited expense features of MDM/EMM solutions, but I want to put them in the proper context of a mobile telecom expense management perspective. In this post, I will explain the savings features of an MDM/EMM, how they differ from a TEM and why an effective TEM generates larger savings. …

How do MDM/EMM and TEM Differ?
To start with Expense is TEM’s middle name. MDM/EMM manages devices and TEM manages expenses.

How do MDM/EMM features help manage telecom spending?
The most popular MDM/EMM expense feature is “roaming notification” or alerts.

Roaming is when you are using your wireless device in an area not covered by your home carrier but that of a “local” carrier. In agreement with your home carrier, signal coverage is provided by a local carrier at a premium cost, allowing you to continue using your device as if nothing has happened. In the Past, you’d typically, get the next month’s bill with some surprisingly huge charges from the network providers on which you roamed. Very little can be done after the fact to get those charges reduced.

Fortunately, today US carriers as well as other countries and regions have agreements within local boundaries, and users won’t have such surprise additional fees and is less of a concern.

Unless they travel Internationally! With International travel, all bets are off. You exit the plane, turn on your phone and it get picked up by a foreign carrier. Before you know it, you’ve agreed to pay astronomical roaming charges. It is not unusual for a typical $100 monthly bill to become a few thousand dollars. Regular travelers can simply pay modest extra amount for an international calling plan and get a reasonable monthly rate (but much higher than a standard rate). Depending on the carrier, sometimes you can get an international rate just for the month potentially saving thousands.

MDM/EMM’s can detect that an individual is roaming off the home network and generates a user alert so the individual can choose to continue or not. The MDM/EMM solution may also send an an alert to administrators, which may be able to assist the user in getting an international plan before incurring extra expenses. It’s limited, but can be significant preventing a few occasions may justify the feature. It may be more effective to identify frequent international travelers and update their plans.

The other main claim of MDM/EMM’s is that they can identify most active users and least active users. MDM/EMM solutions can create usage reports that management can act upon by changing heavy user plans or removing low-use users. Some reports only reflect messaging use not voice. Therefore, it is important to define the usage base.

These features are real and have real value but are not, “real” mobile telecom expense management (TEM) systems.

How is mobile Telecom Expense Management different?

Mobile Telecom Expense Management is by far a more robust end-to-end lifecycle concept. Ask yourself some of the following questions:

Do you know how much you’re spending? If not, dollar signs might as well be spewing from the tablets and mobile devices in your infrastructure.

Is your organization getting the best rate plans available for your size?

Are the carriers actually billing you at the proper rates? Applying discounts?

Do Joe and Mary, who have the same devices, have the same plans? Same features? Are they billed at the same rates?

How are you ensuring your employees get the right devices, features and plans?

How do you dispute issues or incorrect bills and ensure you get credit?

If you’re unsure about any of these, a true mobile telecom expense management assessment and service can help provide answers.
A TEM service typically quickly begins saving money and has a short breakeven point.

With a telecom expense management, you can help reduce telecom expenses by typically 10 to 20 percent and increase control over voice, data and wireless costs. Typical payback ranges from three to nine months.

How TEM worksTEM typically starts with an optimization and expense review of all invoices, statements and bills for the past three months. This exercise can determine how much you are overpaying for mobile services. Mobile TEM is a mobile device lifecycle management service. A few of its key attributes are that the TEM service can:

Based on its industry benchmarking, negotiate rates, terms and conditions with your carriers on your behalf, resulting substantial savings

Process your monthly invoices, audit to verify accuracy and even process payment to the carrier, reducing your burden and costs

Manage disputes and ensure proper credit if an invoice is found to be in error

Facilitate usage by assisting in the development of user personas and profiles identifying classes of need and arranging for plans that fit the profiles; or on a larger scale helping purchase bulk minutes, data and text at lower rates and then allocating to individuals and apportioning those reduced costs down to organization or department levels

Provide a user portal for employees to select approved devices, rate plans, services, accessories and so on, and process them, including approvals, submitting and tracking orders with the carrier, ensuring shipment to the user and proper activation and provisioning

Comparing MDM/EMM and TEM solutions
The complete TEM picture is above and you can’t get these services and associated savings from an MDM/EMM. MDM/EMM’s are necessary and have their own value proposition.

But an MDM/EMM alone can’t tell you if you were billed incorrectly, inform you that you’re eligible for a device upgrade, order a device and more.MDM/EMM and TEM complement each other and in many cases can be integrated

IBM had a long history of TEM Services prior to the Wireless age. Keep in mind Mobile TEM only relates to the devices connecting to cell towers. True TEM includes all the other connections (wired) supporting a business on the internet, including switches, routers and gateways

Tangoe enhanced capabilities in 2015 when by purchasing IBM’s Emptoris Rivermine Telecom Expense Management, A software solution which provided expense data is in a single database managed from a single system not one for fixed and one for Mobile. When TEM is integrated with an MDM/EMM solution, it can Leverage the MDM/EMM to also lock or wipe devices and to reset passwords. GSGtelco has a strong reputation for pulling together TEM, Device Life Cycle Management and Cloud Hosted MDM/EMM. MOBI and other Solid vendors are available.

However independent TEM information is scarce these days, Gartner has not written a Magic Quadrant for Telecom Expense Management since March 29, 2012 even access to the 2013, report on critical capabilities for TEM has expired. While Gartner has published a paper “Competitive Landscape: Independent Telecom Expense Management Providers, 2016“, at $1,295, I have not found one of its providers sponsoring free access.

To learn to know more about TEM and how TEM services can reduce your costs and increase your bottom line? I suggest reviewing:

Often when we hear the word “Analytics” it is associated with “IBM Watson”, “Jeopardy” and the advances in cancer research and healthcare.

This article discusses Mobile analytics. What are mobile analytics? The quick answer: done right, mobile infrastructure analytics provides an end-to-end (view of mobile user experience such that trouble areas can be easily identified and proactive steps taken to correct them.
Should you care? Yes

Note: Web Analytics is similar but traditionally assumes desktop browser access as opposed to a device which has a smaller screen. Web analytics doesn’t address issues where a user may have had to rotate the device to see more clearly or or how often had to use fingers to enlarge an image.

Should you care about mobile analytics for the enterprise?

Is your enterprise planning to implement mobile applications in the near future?

Does your business rely on the use of mobile applications by customers?

Does your help desk get frequent calls about mobile apps not working?

Are you losing business or consumer transactions because users are having difficulty and abandoning the application or cart? Would you even know?If you said yes to any of the above, then yes, you should care about mobile analytics!

What does it mean to you?Not having good analytics tools could mean losing business, money and reputation in the market. Your customers or employees may be avoiding adoption of applications because of bad experiences using your app—experiences that could be corrected and prevented using mobile infrastructure analytics.

Let’s start at the beginning. I’ve been around (some say forever) in computing for over 33 years and mobility for 17. I’m still a bit old school, and I don’t use apps as much as folks of more recent generations. Because I don’t use them frequently, it’s much more disturbing. Some applications seem to randomly return errors, crash and need to be opened again or even require a device reset. When this happens, I usually delete the app and attempt to get money back where applicable. I have always held that if it’s happening to me, it can and is happening to others too.

That said, Millennial’s have grown up with “apps”, expect them to work and may be less tolerant and less loyal to brands.

When a user deletes an app, What does this mean for the enterprise?

An online merchant loses customers and sales as carts are abandoned.

If it’s a standalone app, the app doesn’t make the sales it should or if free doesn’t get the pass-through advertising or other revenue it should.

If it’s an enterprise app, it is not adopted by employees and they work around it or lose productivity.

Where’s the app failure coming from?As I wrote in a previous post, there are in the mobile infrastructure: enterprise, security, Internet, and user. All four zones must be working properly for the successful daily use of mobile devices in the enterprise. However, they are not all under the control of the enterprise, and a failure of any one of the elements in a zone can cause problems. The app on the device and the app server are only two pieces.

I can’t count the times that I’ve been handed an iPhone or iPad by a family member saying that Facebook, Pinterest, email or a shopping app isn’t working. In most cases, clearing the error message and trying again gets everything working fine. The app no longer fails, data comes back from the server, and therefore the error was in between. Such as, the local ISP or a load balancer at the enterprise and not app or site itself but, giving the app, app provider or IT team the black eye. Not to mention, my having to try to explain.

We have all heard the help desk cries:

The app hangs or takes forever to respond!

The app went away and I had to reopen it!

I keep getting an error message!

Mobile application administrators and help desks hear these statements day in and day out. At any point of failure, even those outside the control of mobile IT, the app gets the blame because the user’s perception is that the application or server isn’t working. Until recently, enterprises had no end-to-end view of how an app was performing or if something was causing it to fail to perform in the users’ eyes.

Where mobile infrastructure analytics can help
Mobile infrastructure analytics provides an end-to-end view of the infrastructure supporting your mobile application. This includes tracking things like

The overall user experience

How long users stay on a page, what they search for and add to the cart

Whether they have to rotate the screen or expand or shrink the view

Whether they buy or abandon the cart, where they abandon from, and whether they return to it

Whether smartphones abandon more than tablets

All of this data and much more can be collected and and presented grapically to help companies understand the mobile user experience and provide insights for improvement.

Mobile infrastructure analytics correlates the errors seen by the user to events and errors in the infrastructure allowing administrators to proactively respond, correct and prevent additional issues. Mobile analytics predictive capabilities can generate alerts that a problem is coming, and administrators can stake actions to prevent users from ever being effected.

This is what mobile analytics means and why you should care.

How to learn more and get startedWant to know more about mobile analytics and how tools can provide actionable insights into your mobile application infrastructure, performance and your customer or employee user experiences? I suggest a look at the following links for more information:

In fact, there is no reason to shy away from the topic of analytics, and I will tell you why. First, believe it or not, you already understand analytics. How is that? Let’s take a look at some analogies that provide an easy way to relate the concept, starting with sports.

Four analytics analogies

As a kid, did you ever have to choose sides for a game of soccer, football or dodgeball? Well, you or the captain used analytics to pick players. The data points were assumptions—right or wrong—based on individuals’ gender, size, strength, speed and past game experience. In essence, you were performing analytics with real or simulated data and associated attributes to pick players.

Or think about the draft in fantasy football. Why do you pick players? Because of their stats. You know the rules and how points are assigned from play each week. Midseason trades too—these are all based on analytics.

How did you choose your last car among the various alternatives? Gas mileage? Reputation of the manufacturer? Repair history? Cost comparison? It’s all analytics!

Have you ever picked up a copy of Consumer Reports to help pick out a washing machine, entertainment center, kids cereal or something else? Yup, that too is analytics.

In each of the cases above, decisions are made based on analytics. In some cases, you’re more familiar with the data; in others, you just used looked at the Harvey Balls. (Yes, they have a name.)

In simple terms, mobile analytics is very much the same. Like choosing sides for a game, picking fantasy players, or guessing which teams will make the final four, you, your staff or trusted vendors decide what attributes of your business infrastructure relate to mobility and should be tracked and measured.

Then tools, such as IBM Tealeaf or AppDynamics, do the heavy lifting (all the math and calculations) so that you take the insights from your graphically represented customized dashboard of qualitative data instead of Harvey Balls) and transform them into actions that will improve customer experience, reduce customers abandoning the site and increase sales.

What do mobile analytics look like in real life?

Turning to a more practical example for discussion: say your company has had a website presence and maybe even a web storefront for sales. You’ve enabled it for mobile devices or even created a mobile app. Maybe you’ve also developed a mobile application for employees to conduct daily business.

The questions you need to be asking yourself are:

How are the employees doing?

Are they more productive?

Is the help desk getting calls?

Are sales increasing?

Is brand awareness increasing?

Are customers returning to the storefront, completing purchases or abandoning carts?

Where do they spend their time when browsing?

Where do they experience trouble or give up?

Are sales appropriately distributed across the population of device types, or are more transactions completed by tablet than phone?

This is where mobile analytics tools and services do the heavy lifting and provide you with actionable intelligence. Mobile analytics can let you know what’s working well and what is not, with specific insights to why. In particular, for the enterprise, AppDynamics, SAS, IBM Tealeaf and Cognos , are Analytics technologies can provide dashboard graphics that can be drilled into to determine measures and quantify the data to answer your questions.

Did a customer abandon a cart because the network was slow, there was an error or they were just looking? Maybe they bailed because they couldn’t really see what they wanted on the smartphone screen. With good analytics tools and service, you can see what your customers did, when they did it and sometimes even why.

In addition to helping with user experience, IBM Infrastructure Analytics Services can correlate user events with network and back-end server logs to determine if there was slow response time or even an error that caused the user to abandon the cart or application. From the measurements, the analytics software can proactively generate alerts for infrastructure issues so they can be corrected before the customer or employee experiences a problem.

You’re already familiar with analytics!

Tealeaf CX Screen capture

There is no mystery to it. Implementing analytics mobile or otherwise for your enterprise is simply a matter of knowing the important stages of application use, what’s important important to measure, and letting the tools or a service do the heavy lifting.

Without additional Hardware, Software and training, an analytics service can provide you with a graphical view of that critical data and help you correlate user behaviors in your mobile application in real time. With predictive analytics help achieve better understanding of usage patterns, abandonment, availability, performance and capacity allowing you to make needed adjustments to meet business goals. Or a service can “host” the heavy lifting while your staff implements the capture and reporting for actionable decision making.

Want to learn more? I suggest a look at:

Hopefully, this blog post has made mobile analytics easier to relate to and given you some insight to mobile analytics and how tools can provide actionable insights into your mobile application infrastructure, performance and your customer or employee user experiences? I suggest a look at the following links for more information:

Short, “Simple” Mobile Analytics Demo

Analytics continues to improve by leaps and bounds. Processing power, data storage capacity, types and amounts of data collected, methods of analysis and presentation to take meaningful action. I narrated and completed a video on my own time in 2015 (in part to learn Camtasia Studio and Tealeaf). It was placed and still hosted on YouTube by IBM. Some some images were provided by colleagues. Other images are actual IBM® Tealeaf®screen grabs of data. “Color of Summer” is from a current IBM Watson/Tealeaf CX Analytics demo on You Tube analyzing why web shopping carts are abandoned.

This was a very simplified but practical example of using real time mobile analytics and hopefully, analytics a little easier to relate to and given you some insight to mobile analytics and how tools can provide actionable insights into your mobile application infrastructure, performance and your customer or employee user experiences.

Want to learn more?
I suggest a look at the following links for more information:

The Security Zone

In my initial article, I introduced the idea of four zones of a mobile enterprise network: Enterprise, Security, Internet, and User zones. All four areas contribute to the success or failure of a mobile enterprise, and all must be working properly in order to ensure success. In the first post we discussed the enterprise zone, consisting of the enterprise back end—mail, messaging solution (example) and directory services as points of success or failure in mobility. In this second post of the series, we’ll talk about security.

The enterprise security zone is the next zone of focus; it is still within the control of the enterprise but not of the typical mobility service team. The security zone is typically set up and managed by the enterprise networking team.

The enterprise security zone’s intent is that networking, server and application access behind the firewall is “Private”. However, since is Internet connected for employees and customers “Privacy” is “Virtual” and the zones purpose is create a secure “Gateway” to ensure corporate network access to is only done by those allowed. The Security Zone is typically made up of routers, switches, proxy’s, anti-spam or virus and other networking devices to create an enterprise network security firewall directly in front of the back-end enterprise infrastructure or network. The zone often includes a second firewall directly attached and facing the Internet. If you have dual firewalls in the zone it is called a demilitarized zone (DMZ). BlueCoat Products is a major supplier of such devices and appliances.

Depending on the mobility solution, there may be other servers sandwiched between the two firewalls. This diagram simply shows a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and a reverse proxy server. The VPN allows secure administration, browsing and mobile application access. The reverse proxy can broker requests so that outside entities only talk to the proxy and never actually have access to an infrastructure server.

Often existing servers are used for mobility solutions by updating the settings, ports and rules based on the inputs of the mobility team specific to the solution selected.

The enterprise security zone is a key, complex area. Typically the internal firewall is set up only to allow traffic from the IP addresses of the proxy and VPN to access the specific IP of back-end servers such as messaging, and only over specific ports. Messaging and back-end servers communicate over specific port numbers that vary from application to application. Similarly, the front-end firewall is the initial filter restricting all traffic to the enterprise, including to mobile devices and applications.

This can be difficult and confusing to get correct initially. Many applications use and require ports not documented in materials or not easily identified. It is typically a “set and forget” procedure to establish but still requires diligence as new network, server infrastructure or other changes requiring updates to the firewall may affect existing ports and rules.

If there is a mistake in updating ports and rules it can create a point of failure in the communication path. The user perception will be that the mobile device or application is at fault. The firewalls and security zone are normally managed by Enterprise Networking team. Separated from Mobility the only the Networking team has access to security dashboards, tools, controls and ability to update setting. Obscured from this data mobility teams to isolate messaging issues due to an issue within the security zone. Some monitoring and mobile device management (MDM) solutions provide tools to help determine a firewall issue.

I’m not really a firewall and security guy, My experience was more at the Physical layer network in my early career with IBM. Such as, which pins on the connectors perform which functions and how data packets flow across the network. But Feel free to share your thoughts or questions. A good deal of network and security information can be found at Infrastructure Security Services .

In the first two zones discussed the Enterprise has complete control on what and how much to implement to ensure Success or Failure, load balancers, fail-over or cluster servers. In Security, firewalls, proxy’s, devices and network appliances.

In my next next post of the “four zones” series, I’ll begin to discuss the last two zones where the enterprise has “no direct control”, starting with the Internet zone.